Greetings fellow gardeners! I have what used to be a gorgeous french lavender plant that has basically deteriorated ever since bringing her home. It started with the flower buds (normally purple) coming out brown and dry looking, though the bulb they were on was green. Then weeks-months later, about half way down all the stems, the leaves...grew in size? They got longer and fatter and then flash forward a couple more weeks later, and the all those leaves have turned brown and dry and have died. This is on every single stem. But there is now new growth on the top halves of the stems and even a little at the base, but no signs of any flowering. She is facing west and gets sun most of the day. She's never been overwatered I wait until her soil has dried out completely (I check with my little meter) to water her. She still smells great and if you break a branch, they're still green inside. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Scissors included in picture for size reference.

please!!

@NatalieRose127 Growing lavender in pots can be tricky. But first, it will help to know where you are, what your weather conditions are, and how long the lavender has been in that pot. Also, what kind of soil did you use, and are you fertilizing, if so, with what?
Without knowing the above, I can tell you that the lower browning usually happens if the plant wasn't cut back last season or early this year. Also, while lavenders definitely like to be on the dry side, the more important requirement is excellent drainage. The top inch or so of the soil might be dry, but below, around the roots, it is remaining too damp. I water my potted lavenders way more often that my in-ground plants, but they're in a fast-draining mix.

Give us a bit more info and maybe we can repair your lovely friend!

I've had plenty of them go along just fine and then suddenly die. I now avoid small containers. I'm not sure why. It just seems to be a more natural environment, a larger expanse of soil to better mimic their native environment.

They do like a surprisingly large portion of the top cut away each year late summer after blooming. I once spent some time on a lavender farm in Provence, and they had just harvested mechanically, leaving a field of wretched looking stubble. But that's the way to rejuvenate lavender and get a new growth next season.

The farm was just about perfectly situated, light rocky soil on a long gentle downslope toward a valley with le Mont Ventoux in the distance. I know I'm fighting uphill in South Texas heat, but I keep at it.

@nmoasis thanks so much for your reply! Im in San Diego, California where its mostly sunny with some cloudy days here and there. The lavender has been in that pot since we brought it home from the nursery, probably about 6 months. I used all succulent potting soil because of the drainage factor and I fertilized once with miracle grow all purpose water soluble plant food about a month ago but have not since.
Should I remove the stems that are half-browned? (Its all of them). I don't water it often to the point where i'm concerned i didn't water it enough when I first got it, while it was getting established. I have a little moisture/pH/light meter that i use to check how wet the soil is and am sure to only water it when its fully dried out.
thank you so so much for your help!!

@IntheHotofTexas thank you so much for your reply! what a great community. Do you think i should cut the stems down? If so, where from on the plant? the stems are all half-browned and im afraid if i did cut them, it would just be leaving the dead portions of the plant without enough live material.
Thank you!

Your right. By no means cut down to the dead wood. The wood parts cannot put out new growth.

Here's what I would try if it were mine. Anyone else is welcome to reflect on it and argue otherwise. I'm by no means sure of success, but here's my reasoning.

It missed its annual pruning, and that's almost certainly why is has dead areas and is so splayed out and not at all attractive in a natural lavender way. I don't want to just leave it like that. That's the road to death.

But French lavender is more sensitive to pruning error than English. I would tentatively:

Cut away all the mostly dead splayed out branches, even if they have healthy green ends. I mean those on yours that are hanging over the rim of the pot. You don't want those shaping your plant.

It's hard for me to see clearly, but it looks like the rest of yours has branches brown on their lower halves, with plenty of green above. And it looks to me like you have four to six inches of green stemmed recent growth above the wood. If that's right, I think I'd prune so that there was only about three inches of healthy, green (not woody) stem.

That will likely stimulate some new growth and start getting the plant back on schedule. Frost is probably not an issue for you, so I'd just watch them over the winter. If I guessed right, the new growth will pick up, it will flower in spring, and you can then go to a standard pruning schedule where, after the bloom, you shave it back down to the two or three inches of green again. Or if there's not enough growth to make that feel okay, deadhead the flowers. I'd probably cut off flowers the next year, anyway, to conserve energy.

If it was a big old neglected woody lavender, I'd definitely use a rotation, hard pruning it by thirds or quarters, because a hard pruning of the whole thing could kill it. I'm frankly unsure about yours, so I think I'd just be careful to leave plenty of green. The woody parts will not put out new growth, not do they breathe. In the wild, lavender has good roots, so it can send up shoots if something very bad happens to it. I wouldn't gamble on that happening with a younger plant.

Now, it's not going to be a pretty plant for a long while. I might consider, after it has time to get going, repotting it, burying the bare woody stems. That could be late winter or early spring, if you think it's looking healthier. If that goes alright, you can begin shaping it in the summer.

I have a French lavender I just received and planted in a wide pot. I don't know its history, but it looks like it has recently put on new growth, so I will probably give it a modest pruning in August to prevent what you have now.

And do not fertilize. French lavender evolved for low-fertility soils and will get leggy and weird with too much nutrient.

@natalierose127
I'm going to throw a little confusion into this discussion. There is probably no other plant that is so steeped in conflicting information as lavender, starting with the naming. Both Lavandula dentata and L. stoechas are both sold as French lavender and both are sold under different names also. There is a L. x intermedia "Provence" than many people assume is "French" lavender because of the name. My point is that it helps to know what you've got. I'm not seeing L. dentata in your photos, but perhaps I just can't discern the detail of the toothed leaves.

You've made a good choice with the soil, but I'm not sure about the pot. If that saucer is attached to the pot, it prevents it from freely draining. Your best choice is a pot with a large hole, and don't use a saucer at all.

As with everything Lavender, "rules" about feeding and watering are all over the place. Remember that a confined plant in sterile potting oil needs supplementary feeding. And because its roots can't stretch out to find water underground, it needs more from you. Sources conflict about nitrogen, but I think MG is too high. Since your goal is to get it bushier, I would worry less right now about getting it to bloom and concentrate on overall vigor. MG flushes through pretty fast, so I would start giving it diluted fish emulsion (5-1-1) every week. Water first, let it absorb into the soil, then water again with the fish. Sometime in the fall, feed it with something close to a 5-7-3. (that happens to be the NPK proportions of a Happy Frog fertilizer I have. Doesn't need to be exact, but the N should not be higher than the P. A 10-10-10 could work, but at half strength). It will probably be in dry, rather than liquid, form: it doesn't matter which, just go lighter rather than heavier.

Your climate is hot but with high-ish humidity--as I type this, your humidity is 61%, mine is 17% so we need to allow for that. Still, I think you should increase the water. Here's one way to find out if you're under/over-watering: Water it as you usually do, wait two days, then pull the whole thing, soil and all, out of the pot and check the moisture at the bottom. If it's soggy, your drainage is poor and that's a whole other can of worms. If the bottom is dry but the top is damp, you need to water more deeply. If it's uniformly damp throughout the pot, fine. Water exactly like that roughly every week while it's very hot. All of this is variable. You might go 10 days. Here's the takeaway:>>> The frequency of watering is less important than the drainage<<< Lavenders don't like wet feet.

I am drawing on my own experience and research, both on the internet and in my various reference books, and the commonly held "rule" that you must not cut into the woody stem is disputed and, in my recent experience, not true. Late last fall I tucked a large healthy potted lavender in a sheltered place on the patio to protect it from freezing and forgot about it, so it didn't get watered. In March I pulled it out and it looked entirely dead. I had hacked off most of the branches to make it easier to lug to the trash barrel when I noticed tiny green buds all over the woody base. I pulled it out of the pot, trimmed some roots, refreshed the soil, fed and watered it. It is still a pathetic specimen and needs another year to fully come back, but it grew and bloomed profusely. I wish I'd taken photos of that process. Here is what it grew from--as I say, I had just hacked at it:



I read somewhere that some lavenders will sprout from wood and some won't, but darn, I don't know which ones and can't find that source So I'd play it safe and prune as Gerald suggested, above, but watch for new growth below. If it does sprout from the wood, you can get more aggressive next year. You'll want to do a lighter trim in early spring before the buds form. I do know that in your area "spring" can be in February. Just watch for new growth.

Sorry to ramble on. If this were any other plant, it would have taken one paragraph. Here are a couple of sources I found, and they have conflicting advice (to each other and to me!). Sometimes it just takes trial and error.

https://www.gardenanswersmagaz...

https://www.hortzone.com/blog/...

Good luck!

Doesn't it seem odd that a plants that is heavily farmed is so confusing. But they're old plants with lots and lots of variants. What's grown in commercially in Provence, largely for its oil, is various lavandin hybrids. (One of my best memories was staying in a 400-year old farmhouse on a lavender (and donkey) farm, with the barn attached to the house and full of the harvesting equipment, all soaked in oil.)

Provence lavandin's oil always seems to me to be very powerful, very pungent, with camphor notes and very different from "English lavender" which I always associate with sweet florals. But good luck teasing out facts, even identification points. You can find everything stated as fact on the Internet. I just judge by the different scents and don't worry about what's "true" or not.

So, if you nurse this one back to health, you become the new expert. Of course, that's only for that one plant.

From what I saw in Provence, they set the harvester so that they leave green. Of course, they are plants that are rigidly consistently cut and very uniform, and they typically put out quite tall blooming stems and are baled for processing. You can imagine the smell of a huge round bale of lavender.

@intheheartoftexas it must have been heavenly on that lavender farm. I have about 7 different varieties lavender and lavadin essential oils. Each one has a different aroma, yet each one smells like "lavender." My mother was English, and a gardener. Every summer we made lavender sachets, wands and potpourri for gifts. As an adult, I discovered lavender ice cream and lavender lemonade. Currently, it's one of the ingredients in my bedtime herbal tea blend. There's nothing quite like it.

@IntheHotofTexas and @nmoasis I am absolutely overwhelmed, I don't even know what to say other than I am excited to apply everything you have taught me today. Thank you for such knowledgeable and clear information. Your in depth suggestions make me even more excited about gardening and the wonderful people it brings. Im going to trim it just as you suggested right now. @IntheHotofTexas you are correct in assuming all the branches are brown on their lower halves, with plenty of green above. Im going to do exactly as you said with the pruning, and i do think it'll be good to deadhead the flowers until the rest of her is thriving. You are also right in assuming that frost is not an issue here. It does get colder in the winter but I've never had an issue with frost yet. Im so excited to give her some new life and I couldn't do it without you. Thank you so much i'm so grateful.
@nmoasis wow!! I am so amazed with how knowledgable one can be about lavender! so impressive. Good eye, my lavender is indeed L. stoechas. And the pot its in is definitely an issue, the saucer is attached however i recently drilled a couple holes in the bottom of the pot to help with that drainage issue because i noticed it allowed the plant to sit in water longer than it should have whenever i do water it. I was hesitant about using the MG anyway as i have heard some concerning things about their formulas, so I will start with the fish emulsion oil! omg..what an AMAZING trick for under/overwatering detection! simply amazing! I wish I had known about that sooner! I can't thank you enough!
@IntheHotofTexas @nmoasis I thank you both so sincerely!!

@NatalieRosa127
You're welcome. Your gratitude makes it my pleasure.

I'm trying to get my new lavender through a not very ideal time for potting. Yesterday afternoon, the sun just blasted it and had it starting to wilt. I moved it where it can stay for a while with a short time of full sun and the rest of the day dappled sunlight until it settles down and gets established. It perked back up quickly. Hard on it to ask it to move in during high summer.

I asked the source if it had been pruned this year and was told it had not yet bloomed and so had not been pruned. So I'll let it go as it is and watch.